I pull a face.
‘Your smart, easy way with words isn’t going to get you out of this one,’ I tell him as we walk up the driveway. ‘Call them, now.’
‘No way, I want to surprise them,’ he insists, opening the front door for me.
‘You’re an idiot sometimes, do you know that?’ I ask rhetorically, around the same time my parents both yell ‘surprise’ and fire party poppers in our direction.
I watch as their faces fall, their beaming grins slipping away into nothing. The room falls silent, but only for a second.
‘Hello,’ I say warmly. My parents follow suit and greet me with a hug.
‘Everything OK?’ my mum asks.
‘Oh, we’re fine,’ I reply honestly. ‘I’m just teasing Mark over a questionable decision.’
I give my hubby-to-be a playful nudge. He’s impossible to be mad at.
‘We’ll ask no more,’ my dad says before pulling Mark in for a handshake/hug. ‘Come here, you. Congratulations. And thank you, we didn’t think anyone would be taking this one off our hands.’
‘Hey,’ I laugh. ‘What do you mean “off your hands”? I moved out when I was eighteen.’
I’ve always wanted to be independent, even when I was a little kid. My mum, liking to think she’s a bit of a psychologist, puts this down to my being an only child. I don’t know what the reason is; all I know is that I feel more comfortable doing things for myself. That’s why I can’t let Mark pay for everything. That’s why I spent years living in that tiny hellhole with Gil, so that I could take care of myself while I was working my way up the career ladder. It’s good, though, because I can be proud of everything I’ve worked for, and know that I’ve done it all on my own.
‘Yeah, we just never thought you’d be the marrying kind,’ my dad explains. There’s a smile on his face, but it sounds like there’s a little truth in there. ‘You know, being so career-minded, your wild nights out… We’re just so pleased you’ve got Mark and that he takes care of you.’
I feel my brow furrow at the thought of needing someone taking care of me, but I suppose he’s right that Mark does do his best to take care of me, and I wouldn’t change the way he is for anything. To have someone give so much of a shit about you feels amazing.
‘I’d say we should crack open a bottle, but with Mark driving… I’ll put kettle on?’ my dad suggests, clapping his hands as he jumps to his feet.
‘I’ll give you a hand,’ Mark replies. Being a typical Yorkshire lad, Mark loves a good cup of tea, whereas I’m more of a coffee person.
As soon as the men are out of the room, my mum sits on the sofa next to me and grabs my hand.
‘That is one beautiful ring,’ she gushes.
As I examine my hand, I can’t help but agree. My boy not only has great taste, but he knows me so well. So well, that he knows I’ve been on a rose-gold kick for as long as I can remember, and when I happened to mention that I liked the look of champagne sapphires – my boy was listening carefully.
At the time, he laughed. He said that some girls demanded platinum rings with a big rock of a diamond in there, but I told him I didn’t care about that. Well, I don’t. If I’m going to wear a ring every day, it should be something that I actually want to wear every day, because I think it looks cool, not because it’s expensive. It would seem that, as a compromise, Mark opted for a rose-gold ring with a big, champagne sapphire, surrounded by diamonds. I might not have wanted a ridiculously expensive ring (mostly because I’m so clumsy and forgetful), but Mark insisted I deserved it. I’m wearing it right now, because I imagine it would look pretty bad if I didn’t, but as soon as we’re back home I’ll probably just lock it away in the safe and wear something cheap as a placeholder. Something I can accidentally leave in a bathroom or fling straight off my finger as I gesture wildly while I’m telling a story at work.
‘So, time to meet the in-laws,’ my mum says, pulling a face.
‘What does that face mean?’ I laugh.
‘I just remember meeting your dad’s family for the first time,’ she recalls. ‘Your Grandma Pratt did not like me at all. Straight away, from the moment she met me, that was it – instant dislike.’
‘I never knew that,’ I reply.
‘Well, while she was alive, it didn’t seem fair to badmouth your gran to you, and we did eventually find a way to tolerate each other…’
‘Mum, this is not helping at all.’
My mum thinks for a moment, like she’s wracking her brains for some words of comfort for me.
‘Your Uncle Ben’s wedding was only a few weeks before you were born. Now, you were a big baby, so by this stage I was huge and I was heavy. I spent ages looking for the right outfit, and some shoes that I could actually walk in because I’d been living in trainers, and there was no way I could wear trainers to a wedding, not without your gran having a pop at me. So I got this long, green dress, and it was nice, but I was just so big, I didn’t exactly look like a Victoria’s Secret model in it, and I got these black shoes that had a bit of a heel on them – best I could do if I wanted to be able to walk.’
‘That’s fair enough,’ I reply. ‘Who would criticise the outfit of a pregnant woman?’
‘Your gran,’ my mum says with a laugh. ‘She told me that I looked like a hill, and that my shoes looked like orthopaedic aids for correcting what she called “wonky feet”.’
‘That’s harsh,’ I admit, suddenly not finding things so funny.
‘It was OK, though,’ my mum continues. ‘Because later that night your gran took a tumble in the ridiculously high heels she was wearing and ended up with a shiner of a black eye. So whenever she was horrible to me, to cheer myself up, I would watch the video of her gliding face-first across the dance floor. Suddenly, things wouldn’t seem too bad.’
I gasp.
‘Mum, I can’t believe you’re saying that.’
‘What? She was an old bag. She suggested I put you on a diet when you were two years old. God rest her soul,’ my mum hastily adds.
‘Whose soul are we resting?’ my dad asks, carrying a tray of mugs into the room, Mark not far behind him with a plate of biscuits.
‘Your mother’s,’ my mum replies, taking a cup of coffee from him.
‘Aw, if only she knew how missed she was,’ my dad says wistfully with a smile.
‘If only,’ my mum replies with a smile of her own.
I’d always kind of figured that my mum and my gran didn’t really get along that well, but I never realised she made comments like that to my mum. Is the urban legend of the evil mother-in-law not a legend at all? But that can’t be true. Sure, that’s the way things are in movies, and maybe my gran did make a few remarks to my mum, but maybe her outfit was rubbish, and I was a chubby toddler – I still am, in some ways.
My mum, ever the actress, is obviously embellishing – but with perfect comedic timing, as usual. Growing up with actor parents was interesting, to say the least. For one thing, their poker faces were flawless. When I was misbehaving, and they would pull up alongside the local children’s home saying they were going to give me away, I believed them! They really sold it, and I would instantly cease whatever I was doing that was causing them stress. Their easy confidence wasn’t always my favourite thing either, especially when it came to having friends around or school events. It was like they were always performing, always the centre of attention, always cracking jokes. It did have its plus points, too, though. They definitely told the